Teaching adult learners on software architecture design skills

• Main Authors: OUH, Eng Lieh, IRAWAN, Yunghans
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: software architecture; adult learners; case-based learning; problem-based learning; peer learning; Computer and Systems Architecture; Software Engineering; Systems Architecture
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4171; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5174/viewcontent/teaching_adult_learners__1_.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Software architectures present high-level views ofsystems, enabling developers to abstract away the unnecessarydetails and focus on the overall big picture. Designing a softwarearchitecture is an essential skill in software engineering and adultlearners are seeking this skill to further progress in their career.With the technology revolution and advancements in this rapidlychanging world, the proportion of adult learners attendingcourses for continuing education are increasing. Their learningobjectives are no longer to obtain good grades but the practicalskills to enable them to perform better in their work and advancein their career. Teaching software architecture to upskill theseadult learners requires contending with the problem of how toexpress this level of abstraction practically and also make thelearning realistic. We provide here our seven years’ history ofteaching software architecture of information systems to theseadult learners as a part of a public continued education program.We describe our key challenges encountered at these levels andgo on to analyze the results of the course design we have takenover the years. We also compare our teaching methods based onproblem-based and case-based learning and examine theireffectiveness for adult learners. We hope this discussion can helpeducators design and improve software architecture curriculumand support education researchers in investigating pedagogicalapproaches and tools to better support adult learners.